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So does this mean that Ford, who acquired Volvo and many other car companies has now been acquired itself 

not the japs!

the japs are stealing everything!!

...a Jap company???

not the japs!

my gf is asian. calm down.

my gf is asian. calm down.

Congratulations.  Even more reason I would think to avoid the immaturity you've just displayed.

oh my.

i forgot to be on my best behaviour on an anonymous message board and made a half-hearted comment on the way the first post phrased the word 'jap'. then it was taken as serious by someone and was used to imply that i was racist.

i am so very very sorry to have offended you on this deep personal level.

I heard that Ford was sold to a Jap company??? Someone told me this and I was wondering if this is true, I hope not.




MaloFX

Yeah, we better watch out for companies getting sold to smurf companies in Africa, too...

This, of course, is pure bullsmurf.  I would have heard about that one.  Aside from the fact that I am in the car business myself, my father-in-law manages a Ford dealership.

I heard that Ford was sold to a Jap company??? Someone told me this and I was wondering if this is true, I hope not.

I hope not too. It wold be a sad day for Japanese reliability and quality to get stuck with a dinosaur like Ford.

    nice one, I feel the same way.

...a Japanese company???

not the japs!

Ok... just for the record, the only reason why I said, "Japs" was because it was shorter for Japanese, it didn't cross my mind it would offend people. Lets not forget the question 

When people call me a Brit should I be offended?

Scots?  Swedes?  Aussies?

No.  Those terms are also not usually used disparagingly like the term "Japs".  Maybe a quick glance over U.S. history and Japanese/American relations can shed some light for you on why that term is ill-advised.  For the record, I wasn't "offended" per se, nor am I Japanese or Japanese American.  But I do become annoyed when people use it w/o knowing its meaning and then try to later justify its use by saying it's only half-hearted, or I have a "asian" gf, or by saying this is only an anonymous message board.  Grow up.

Relax 

I call my friends chinks, pollaks and wetbacks, they call me dago.

Cultural slurs have long since become inoffensive to many people around here... simply because the ideas behind them have become such a joke.  In effect, language matures as the ideas held by the society using the language change.  Case in point, the term Yankee.  It was used by British soldiers in the new world to describe New Englanders.  Of course the words were set to tune and used to taunt colonists during the occupation of Boston.  Some lyrics are from www.yankeedoodles.net here...

Brother Ephraim sold his Cow
And bought him a Commission;
And then he went to Canada
To fight for the Nation; ( I can't rhyme nation with commission)
But when Ephraim he came home
He proved an arrant Coward,
He wouldn't fight the Frenchman there
For fear of being devour'd.

However, the song became used more as a term of defiance, and Yankee is now applied generally to US citizens (though I suppose some southerners would object to that ).  My point is just because a word may have a basis in derision, doesn't mean that it will always be offensive.

And just to prod the more politically correct of the forum, lets examine a fun word, the name Connie.  A nice girls name, right?  It can be used as a stand in for the offensive french Connard, a derrogatory term for the vulva, used in the same way "bitch" and "smurf" would be applied.  Anything can become offensive, just as anything can lose its offensive status.

Anyway, Ford is still a US company, but Chrysler is technically British now, as their HQ is Daimler's.

...a Jap company???

not the japs!

my gf is asian. calm down.

You have a girlfriend?